To understand how recessions work you need to know that there are basically three types of national economies worldwide: free market economies, socialist economies and nationalist economies. In free market economies, the government spends as little as it can, and leaves it up to investors to find consumers. In socialist economies, the government spends a lot of money, invests and pays consumers. When there’s a recession on free market economies, we talk about investment crisis or consumer confidence crisis, while in socialist economies we tend to talk about austerity.

The third type of economy, nationalist economies, is a term few economists use and I believe I’m one of the first to mention. These economies were common in totalitarian regimes in Europe or in East Asia, and is an economy where the government joins hand with a few large conglomerates, and where there’s an obsession with being number one. There are those who play tennis because it’s fun, those who play tennis because they like competing, and those who want to be world number one at all costs. Nationalist economies tend to hide recessions and tend not to be comfortable with anything other than double digit growth rates. A lot of times, they cite genetic superiority coupled with cultural superiority, coupled with a God-given mission to rule the world, employing vague terminology in the process.

The world is filled with so much venom and conflict at the moment in just about every field of human interaction and endeavour, be it politics, economics or international relations.

At the dawn of the 21st century, the problems that we face as a species are increasing rapidly in our overcrowded world as we stretch the finite resources that this planet has to offer. Rather than meet in a peaceful communion and transcend our differences to solve our problems, we have instead resorted to primitive rivalry and competition and the problems that we face in the meantime are mounting. The late American scientist Carl Sagan said about life on our planet in his documentary, ‘Pale Blue Dot: A Vision Of The Human Future In Space’ the following: “Consider again that dot [Earth]. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilisation, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Now that leaders around the world are talking about deporting illegal immigrants and restricting immigration, what exactly is an immigrant?

Roughly, there are seven types of foreign nationals that can reside in your country. Such foreign nationals can move from one category to another during their stay in your country, such as someone who came as a student, found employment, then married a local. Others come as students and start businesses, dropping their studies, while others come as tourists or short-term students and overstay their visa, while still others did not have authorization to enter your country, and came by hiding in a car or vessel that entered the country legally.

Now to the different categories of immigrants.

Type 1: Foreign government officials and dignitaries

They used to be the most common form of immigrant, and it’s safe to say they are now among the least common type of immigrant. Governments, armies or state-owned businesses can send dignitaries or officials to work in your country. It’s difficult to find sub-categories as some of them can be quite blurry: in the United States embassy staff can not assist local business or find business opportunities and can only serve as go-betweens and there’s a clear line between business, the military and government. In East Asia for example the line between diplomacy, business and the military is a lot more blurred, that is you can have an army official who has an office at the embassy but also actively seeks clients for his country’s mobile phone company or construction company among others. The length of stay varies from dignitary to dignitary and from country to country. African and Middle Eastern states are famous for sending dignitaries to a foreign country for a lifetime, while other countries like to change their rosters frequently.